Chronic diseases and nutritional deficiencies

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Hip

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I have found that adding Setria glutathione before and after exercise has helped me avoid and has helped me reverse PEM when it happens. I currently take 2.8 grams a day in two 1.4 gram doses

So you are finding that glutathione is a both a PEM shielder as well as PEM reliever? Interesting. Would you be able to quantify how much this helps? For example, some people say that a particular PEM buster allows them to take one day off a PEM that would normally last two days.

Are you taking this glutathione orally? Oral glutathione is thought to have low bioavailability.
 

Learner1

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MODERATOR'S NOTE: THE FIRST 11 POSTS HAVE BEEN MOVED HERE FROM THE THREAD Supplements and Drugs That Reduce or Prevent PEM (Post-Exertional Malaise) BECAUSE THEY WERE OFF-TOPIC

I do take several supplements, far above normal dosing, but they are due to genetic factors and environmental factors that cause me to need more, and my testing shows severe deficiencies until I get my intake up to supranormal levels. At that point, when I am replete, I am in the normal range, preferably toward the higher end for most nutrients.

What I do not believe in is randomly taking large doses of supplements without checking through testing. I have repeatedly found that this can be dangerous, and that they are not single actors, that they are involved in complex systems, and the other cofactors must be factored in, with doses raised or lowered accordingly.
 
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Hip

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Nope. I shared my lab result. I am above the normal range.

Being above the normal lab range for Q10 does not negate the possibility of further benefits from megadoses of Q10. You said earlier that:

CoQ10 is only likely to help if you are deficient in CoQ10

But were is the scientific evidence for that? Where is the evidence that supplements will only help if you are deficient in them? There are lots of examples which contradict this idea, where high doses of supplements, even in those who are not deficient, can have helpful benefits.

For example, in autism, high doses of B6 can be helpful. In anxiety, megadoses of magnesium taken transdermally can be helpful (because magnesium is an NMDA receptor blocker). In ME/CFS megadoses of B12 by daily injection can help reduce brain fog and increase energy. In POTS, megadoses of salt of up to 15 grams daily, way in excess of daily sodium requirements, can be beneficial for increasing blood volume.

In cancer, anecdotally hyperdoses of selenium (5000 mcg daily) in the form of sodium selenite can put some types of chemotherapy-resistant cancer into remission (I know a cancer patient who the doctors said would be dead within a year who is still alive due to taking 5000 mcg of selenium daily — see this thread).


This is where these notions of nutritional testing being able to tell you everything are flawed. You cannot use nutritional testing to determine which supplements might be beneficial in high doses. You can only use nutritional testing to determine which nutrients you are short of. That can be useful info, but it does not tell you anything more than that. The nutrients tests you take are rather limited.

No amount of nutritional testing would have been able to predict that SOC and other ME/CFS patients will benefit from megadoses of Q10. That can only be determined by trial an error.
 
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Learner1

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There are lots of examples which contradict this idea, where high doses of supplements, even in those who are not deficient, can have helpful benefits.
And there are many studies that say that high doses of supplements, even in those who are not deficient can cause cancer and have other detrimental effects.More is not necessarily better, and in many cases, more can be toxic. I'm not necessarily saying that CoQ10 is in that category, as I do not know that, all I know is that CoQ10 is not the gating factor for my energy production.
For example, in autism, high doses of B6 can be helpful. In anxiety, megadoses of magnesium taken transdermally can be helpful (because magnesium is an NMDA receptor blocker). In ME/CFS megadoses of B12 by daily injection can help reduce brain fog and increase energy.
And, if you look into the literature, you will find that researcher Susan Owens identified that many children with autism have significant oxalate issues. Oxalates bind minerals, making magnesium unavailable, and they use up B6 to the point that doses of up to 7g per kilogram of body weight are needed to fight the problem and reduce sulfate depletion. Having an oxalate problem, I have found that I need a dose of this magnitude to be able to have enough B6 to do the 200 plus other things that B6 does in the body.

As for B12, testing methylmalonic acid is typically sufficient to tell if one needs B12 or not. And, yes, I find injections of MB12 to be quite helpful at improving brain function and reducing fatigue, and my labs say that I need it.
This is where these notions of nutritional testing being able to tell you everything are flawed. You cannot use nutritional testing to determine which supplements might be beneficial in high doses. You can only use nutritional testing to determine which nutrients you are short of. That can be useful info, but it does not tell you anything more than that. The nutrients tests you take are rather limited.
They may be limited, but they are the best available at this time, and have pointed me to a number of significant issues that no amount of trial and error would have helped me figure out. Finding that I needed molybdenum, citrulline, phospholipids, and other more esoteric nutrients has been extremely useful and has directly impacted my symptoms. This is how I found I needed BCAAs, which have been effective with busting my PEM, and why I found diminishing returns with it, as my body became replete. They are able to help me see how pathways are working, and to look at my biochemistry systemically.
No amount of nutritional testing would have been able to predict that SOC and other ME/CFS patients will benefit from megadoses of Q10. That can only be determined by trial an error.
Actually, Having been to the United Mitochondrial Disease Foundation conference as well as last year's FDA Voice of the Patient session, and communicating with the other patients there in nutrition oriented discussions, I found that other patients with mitochondrial issues are indeed testing and listening to the results of those tests. And, as I have found, they have found that they have complex systems, and that just adding a mega dose of one nutrient is not necessarily the solution to anything, unless they have a specific enzyme deficiency or point problem.

As for ME/CFS, patients have infections which deplete nutrients, patients have genetic mutations that cause them to use nutrients at various rates, patients have environmental toxins like mycotoxins, oxalates, heavy metals, and chemicals that cause greater needs for certain nutrients. And the ME/CFS researchers have found that patients have greater needs for many nutrients than healthy individuals. These nutrients do not work in isolation. I keep hearing you talk about one specific nutrient or one specific drug or one specific intervention making a miraculous change in someone's ME/CFS. I have found this to be false hope, by and large, because for the most part, most of us do not have one single nutritional deficiency, we are needy in several categories of nutrients, and need several cofactors to make each pathway run. And, for myself and working with many other patients, I have seen the results when adding a particular nutrient that is depleted, which makes the rest of the pathway run well until another bottleneck is run into, and then the magical nutrient stops working, waiting for the now new depleted cofactor to be added. And, when that cofactor (I'll pick molybdenum or B1, because I've seen them work very powerfully) is added, improvement happens once again. And, as these different factors are manipulated, other factors change in relation. We are a complex system of systems with multiple interacting pathways, and it is impossible to predict which pathway one specific nutrient is going to go down for the most part.

When, you actually have comprehensive nutrient testing done, and find out what deficiencies you might have, and work with these pathways and supplying nutrients, then you might also understand. But as long as you continue to bang the drum of one specific nutrient at a time, results will be few and far between....
 

Hip

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When, you actually have comprehensive nutrient testing done, and find out what deficiencies you might have, and work with these pathways and supplying nutrients, then you might also understand. But as long as you continue to bang the drum of one specific nutrient at a time, results will be few and far between....

I will always bang the drum of science and evidence, not marketing and advertising hype. Lots of nutritionists market the idea that nutritional deficiencies are behind chronic diseases, and would have you believe that if you just rectify any nutrient deficiencies, then your disease will go away. But there is no evidence for that; it's a purely a pseudoscientific idea that has not been proven correct.
 

Learner1

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I will always bang the drum of science and evidence, not marketing and advertising hype. Lots of nutritionists market the idea that nutritional deficiencies are behind chronic diseases, and would have you believe that if you just rectify any nutrient deficiencies, then your disease will go away. But there is no evidence for that; it's a purely a pseudoscientific idea that has not been proven correct.
There is actually quite a bit of evidence about nutritional deficiencies causing disease.

The reason a disease caused by nutritional deficiencies might not go away is that damage is done by the disease process that sometimes cannot be undone. Take cancer for instance. Or rickets.
 

Hip

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Or rickets.

We not disputing that there are conditions caused by lack of vitamins — scurvy, rickets, beri beri, etc.

But all the major common chronic diseases that hit humanity are not due to nutritional deficiency. These diseases cannot be rectified by addressing any nutritional deficiencies.
 

Hip

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We disagree that major diseases are not related to nutritional deficiency. Again, simply fixing a nutritional deficiency may or may not reverse the disease, depending upon the damage that has been done and the cascade of subsequent effects of that deficiency.

Nutritional status can be a risk factor for chronic diseases, and the studies you listed just illustrate that. However, there are lots of risk factors for any given disease, including diet, stress, toxin exposure, genetics, etc. But these are not the central cause (in that the disease can still manifest in the absence of these factors), and there is zero evidence that addressing nutritional status can cure any of the major everyday chronic diseases that afflict human beings, and there are no serious scientists who think nutrition can help cure any disease. It's just a marketing idea propagated by nutritionists.
 

Learner1

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Nutritional status can be a risk factor for chronic diseases, and the studies you listed just illustrate that. However, there are lots of risk factors for any given disease, including diet, stress, toxin exposure, genetics, etc. But these are not the central cause, and there is zero evidence that addressing nutritional status can cure any of the major everyday chronic diseases that afflict human beings, and there are no serious scientists who think nutrition can help cure any disease. It's just a marketing idea propagated by nutritionists.
This is not at all true. If you read the studies I posted, there's some serious science involved.

Again, if there is damage done, or an entire cascade of secondary and tertiary effects from the original disease causing nutritional deficiency, then it will be difficult to reverse. After all, once someone has stage 4 cancer, it is pretty irreversible. Or osteoporosis, goiter, rickets, heart disease, the list goes on and on and on and on and on and on.

In many cases, there has been a lot of propaganda by the pharmaceutical industry to dissuade people from nutritional interventions, in the interest of the large profits from the drugs they are selling, which work on only the symptoms of many diseases that are caused by nutritional deficiencies.
 
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JES

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I subscribe to the idea that chronic diseases are multifactorial and I reckon the broad claim "chronic diseases stem from nutritional deficiencies" can be debunked since it doesn't make sense from evolutionary perspective. The reasoning is largely the same as with which we have debunked the idea that genes alone cause diseases. If genetic traits were present that would significantly increase the risk of debilitating diseases, which in turn would affect the reproduction rates, then evolutionary theory is clear about the fact that those traits should over time be selected out.

Using the same reasoning, if we have a strong causation between nutrition and diseases, which would affect reproductive fitness, then evolution should over time intervene. If our ancestors were prone to get a chronic disease from any nutritional imbalance, I don't see how those individuals could efficiently reproduce with the limited food that was available in the harsh conditions they lived in. Supplements weren't a thing until let's say the last century or so. If the human body was so dependent on getting the right mix of supplements or even more broadly speaking, micro-nutrients from food in order to not fall ill with devastating diseases, I don't see how evolution wouldn't have selected those traits out.

There are some caveats to above. You could argue that diseases that were not really hindering reproduction, like for example something mundane like allergies, would still be around. However, for something as physically debilitating like ME/CFS, I think it would almost certainly be selected out over time if it was primarily caused by nutritional status. The only way that wouldn't happen would be if there was meanwhile some other evolutionary benefit associated with the disease. An example of this would be sickle cell anemia, which apparently provides resistance to malaria, so over time people living in malaria zones have been found to develop this predisposing mutation. However, most chronic diseases absolutely have a big negative impact on reproduction and little evolutionary upside to them, as far as we are aware. The other caveat is that evolution obviously doesn't care what happens once we are past reproductive age, so this doesn't refute that supplements at that point could make sense, but quite a few autoimmune diseases and diseases like ME/CFS have onset peaks while in early adulthood, which in turn refutes that.
 
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Learner1

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, if we have a strong causation between nutrition and diseases, which would affect reproductive fitness, then evolution should over time intervene. If our ancestors were prone to get a chronic disease from any nutritional imbalance, I don't see how those individuals could efficiently reproduce
I'm just going to point out that my mother, who was 175cm tall, lost 15cm of height and had CURVED shin bones due to severe vitamin D deficiency before anyone in the medical community noticed. When she fell and broke her shoulder, requiring a reverse total shoulder replacement, with the ball and socket reversed, the Cleveland Clinic put her on 50,000IU of D when they found her vitamin D level was 9ng/ml. Being over 70, her ability to reproduce was not the issue. I was stunned at how no ndctge medical establishment wax to severe nutrient deficiency prior to this serious event.

However, for something as physically debilitating like ME/CFS, I think it would almost certainly be selected out over time if it was primarily caused by nutritional status. The only way that wouldn't happen would be if there was meanwhile some other evolutionary benefit associated with the disease.
No one is saying that ME/CFS is primarily caused by nutritional status. However, the infections, and strain on the immune system and endocrine system and brain, along with whatever else disease process is going on, tends to deplete people of nutrients, which numerous metabolomics researchers have identified as patterns in these patients.
 
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